Baby Rose - YEARNALISM (Maroon) LP

Freshly crowned with her first GRAMMY Award in the category of Best R&B Album for her contribution to Leon Thomas's MUTT, the distinctive singer/alto returns with "Yearnalism," her third studio album, imbued with self-awareness, nurturing, and liberating love. The singer-songwriter and producer defines "Yearnalism" as the process and documentation of longing in its many forms: "Yearning for freedom, longing for love, longing for what you can't have, longing for expansion." This compact LP of 12 songs, destined to become classics, charts a bumpy roadmap of yearning, free from ego. Baby Rose has been working toward this moment for nearly a decade. Raised between Washington, D.C., and Fayetteville, North Carolina, and influenced by artists such as Nina Simone, Donny Hathaway, and Janis Joplin, the musician, born Jasmine Rose Wilson, has been making waves since her debut, "To Myself." By 2019, she was a fixture in the alternative R&B scene. It was the smoky timbre of her voice and an unusually mature presence for her age that first captivated listeners. Since then, she has made her mark on albums with Ari Lennox, Big KRIT, Q, BADBADNOTGOOD, and J. Cole. She provided the end-credits song for the Hollywood blockbuster "Creed III" and contributed her talents both in front of and behind the camera to A24's "Materialists," adding two tracks of haunting texture to the film's soundtrack and making a cameo appearance as a wedding singer. Her industry admirers include heavyweights such as SZA, Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, HER, Kehlani, James Blake, and Olivia Dean.